Hunting and Snatching
by Ben Stiebel
Summary: The snatcher who captured Luna and intimidated her father gets a call from an old acquaintance.


In a darkened warehouse in a forgotten corner of Cardiff a group of black robed wizards and witches gathered. The leader, Zebulun Pieter Alabasium, looked around at his followers and sighed heavily. The Dark Lord had failed to take conquer his enemies with a force of skilled and capable wizards. Z.P. had only this ragtag band, mostly students who had been expelled from Hogwart's.

Each of the rogues told a different story. Infernius Malfoy, cousin to Draco Malfoy, often told the story of how he had used the Sectum Sempre curse in Hogwart's dueling club and had been expelled for it. Z.P. knew that Infernius had in fact tried to curse a fellow student, but not in dueling club. Infernius had tried to curse his house prefect from behind. The curse had backfired and Infernius had spent some time in the infirmary before the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff aversion to cowardice along with the Slytherin and Ravenclaw aversion to incompetence had left him friendless and resulted in his expulsion.

None of the seven other wizards and witches in the group were much more impressive. Z.P. often struggled to manage his life of crime and dark magic with such an incompetent band. But manage he must, for he had served as a snatcher and had been about to be promoted to full Death Eater when the Dark Lord had died. Z.P. and a few other snatchers had been sent to hunt down an especially annoying graduate of Hufflepuff whom Voldemort had condemned for casting protective enchantments around the homes of his muggle neighbors. They returned from that hunt to find that Voldemort had died, the Death Eaters were crushed, and that the defense of "following orders" did not sit well the Order of the Phoenix, whose surviving members officiated over a number of trials and would have certainly sent Z.P. to Azkaban.

Z.P. had managed to disapparate as the aurors took his colleagues into custody and he had been on the run ever since. A few of the Dark Lord's sympathizers had escaped prosecution, and some of them had given Z.P. shelter. Even so he dared not stay in one place too long lest that muggle-loving bastard Potter, his banshee of a wife or any of the other aurors or members of Dumbledore's Army catch him unaware. So he traveled and stole, and picked up criminals and misfits the way a seasoned hound attracts a following of puppies.

"Anyone have any new marks?" Z.P. asked.

"I do," Serenity Snidewick, a Slytherin expelled for attacking a professor, replied. "It's a shop just outside Godric's Hollow. Old man runs it. Silly blighter doesn't have a wand on him half the time."

Z.P. was about to ask what the shop sold when a slight rustling outside caught his attention. Anyone else would have dismissed it, none of the kids seemed to notice, but Z.P. had not stayed a step ahead of the aurors by letting his guard down. "Reg, go and look out the front window and tell me what you see."

Reg, a portly fellow with a tangled mop of brown hair and glasses that always looked slightly askew, waddled to the nearest window and squinted out into the dark. "There's a woman . . . She's casting!"

"I'm out of here!" Daniel, a half blood and Gryffindor flunkie said as he drew his wand. He disapparated, and crashed hard into the wall of the warehouse. Daniel's wand snapped at the impact, as did several of his bones. He fell in a groaning heap

"She's cast an antidisaparation charm," Z.P. said as he walked to the window. Outside a woman with white blond hair and an extremely calm, almost passive expression flourished her wand and spoke softly. "Bugger and all," Z.P said as he recognized the face.

"Is it the aurors?" Infernius asked as he drew his wand.

"Nah," Z.P. said. "It's Loony Lovegood, and I think she might be alone. Wands out, everyone. She must have thought I'd be alone." Z.P. drew his own wand and struggled to still his trembling before anyone noticed. He was a Slytherin himself and had no fear of them. Gryffindors were good for making speeches and dying nobly, but not for much else. Hufflepuffs were lost once you dealt with whoever they were following. But Ravenclaws had always slightly unnerved Z.P. They did not waste time with grand ambitions nor with proving their courage or loyalty. Ravenclaws just studied, amassing knowledge like wizards stockpiling munitions in a magical Cold War. They were usually gentle and passive, but Z.P. had always dreaded facing them in battle, dreaded all that accumulated knowledge focused in a wand pointed at him. "She's coming," he said as she started walking toward the front door. "Get in a circle around the door. Everybody throw curses when she walks in."

A catwalk ran across the width of the warehouse. Reg and Infernius both jogged up the stairs to rain down curses on their enemy from the elevated position. The other five of Z.P.'s gang arranged themselves in a semi circle in front of the door, wands out and ready. Z.P. Stood off to one side near a pile of rotting crates.

The door opened and Luna walked in. She had not changed much since he had last seen her, when he had used an incarcerous spell to bind her for delivery to Malfoy Manor. Other wizards had been there, capturing Luna and intimidating her father. Z.P. had heard rumors about what happened to those wizards after the fall of the Dark Lord. Luna had methodically hunted them down, dispensing soft spoken, mildly autistic justice to those who had captured her and cowed her father. No doubt they were all serving life sentences in Azkaban after very brief trials.

"Ava Kadava!" one student yelled. "Reducto!" another called. Serenity called out "Crucio!" Despite the many flashes of successfully cast spells Luna Lovegood stood calmly in the midst of Z.P.'s students. Her wand was raised and she wore her usual blank expression.

Near Z.P. stood Lizzy Bagshot, a Slytherin washout with the ambition of Tom Riddle and the magical talent of potato. She gasped and slumped to the floor. Z.P. knelt to examine her. She had stopped breathing and had no pulse. Only one spell could do that so quickly. It was one that Luna Lovegood, member of Dumbledore's Army and combatant against darkness at the Battle of Hogwart's, would never use.

"Finite Incantatum!" Z.P. said as he flourished his wand.

Luna, the illusion of Luna, disappeared. Infernius and Reg had been out of the crossfire, but the rest of Z.P.'s crew were down. Blood flowed freely from the weeping victim of a sectumsempre spell and another of Z.P.'s followers writhed in the throes of an especially well cast cruciatus curse.

"What happened?" Infernius asked.

"Illusion spell," Reg replied. "The little tart . . ."

"Flipendo!" a voice called from the door, the door that no one had been watching in the chaos.

Z.P. wondered why Luna would use such a harmless spell, but then Reg overbalanced backward over the railing of the catwalk and belly flopped onto the concrete bellow. Reg whimpered and curled up into a ball on the floor. Infernius ran down the steps, nimbly dodging a jinx from Luna he went. Z.P. cast a killing curse, but Luna stepped out of the way with same urgency normally reserved for letting elderly relatives get past. Z.P. ducked into the rows upon rows of abandoned crates before Luna could cast at him.

Infernius knelt behind a crate, wand at the ready. "What do we do, boss?" he asked as Z.P. approached.

"Stay here, back to back," Z.P. replied. "She has to come down the aisle one way or another and when she does . . ."

"Bombardo maxima," Luna said gently but clearly.

Z.P. and Infernius threw themselves down as the crates around them splintered in something like a rain of matchsticks. The two dark wizards rose in the aftermath. Luna stared at them with the look of one measuring what she sees and who is wholly unimpressed.

"For my aunt and uncle in Azkaban!" Infernius said as he raised his wand. It was broken about a quarter of the way from the tip and only held together but the unicorn hair core.

"No!" Z.P. screamed, but Infernius had already cast a killing curse. The spell backfired in a green flash and Infernius barely managed a groan as he collapsed.

"It really doesn't pay to rely on a Malfoy," Luna said conversationally.

Z.P. tilted his head, acknowledging her point. "Why did Voldemort keep trusting Draco and Lucienne, anyway?"

Luna shook her head. "No idea."

Z.P. shrugged, and said, "Ava kadava."

"Contanum," Luna replied before he had finished.

The green flash of the killing curse stopped in midair. A transparent, slightly glistening orb surrounded the green light of the curse.

Fascination overcame fear and anger and Z.P. walked forward to examine the . . . whatever it was.

"Containment spell," Luna explained. The green expanded so that it took up more and more of the orb. "The Ministry paid me rather well for a counter to the killing curse. I should stand back if I were you. The reaction is . . ." The green reached the edges of the orb and the orb exploded. ". . . energetic," Luna finished.

Z.P. picked himself up of the floor for the second time in as many minutes. "Incarcerous," Luna intoned. A chain appeared around Z.P.'s torso, binding his arms. "That must be awkward for you," Luna said. "And I bit ironic. I believe you once used that spell on me."

Z.P. struggled to point his wand at the chain and flourished. "Finite incantatum." The chain disappeared and Z.P. raised his wand to cast another curse.

"Expelliarmus," came Luna's spell. The wand flew out of Z.P.'s hand. He dove after it. "Incendio," Luna said calmly. A jet of flame struck Z.P. wand and set it aflame.

Z.P. gritted his teeth. He had bought that wand at Olivander's a month after his eleventh birthday. He had studied with it at Hogwart's, had battled and fled and scratched out a living with it. It was as much a part of him as his own right hand. And now it was burning and he had no way to save it.

Z.P. leapt to his feet and ran. There was a door at the back of the warehouse and the dumpster out back was a portkey. He would get away, again. He would find another wand even if it meant murdering every wizard in Diagon Alley with his bare hands. He would . . .

"Petrifico totalus!"

Z.P.'s legs stopped working and he fell forward among the splintered crates. Luna approached. "You may relax now, sir," she said soothingly. "It is over." She knelt so she could look him in the eye. "I have a bit of a confession. I'm not auror. I do occasionally work for the Ministry, and so does my father. We make new spells. He has been working on some very promising legal versions of the Cruciatus and Imperius curses. You will . . ." she paused, lost in the dense maze of her own mind, ". . . assist in that research. You will not have to go to Azkaban." Luna smiled reassuringly, then her expression turned serious. "All of father's other test subjects, that is to say the other snatchers who caught me and scared him, wound up at Saint Mungo."

Zebulun Pietr Alabasium could not open his mouth, but he screamed with all his soul.


End file.
